Two of its members, guitarist Tom Evans and singer Pete Ham, committed suicide, and drummer Mike Gibbins died of a brain aneurysm in Q: Is this tour, in part, an effort to give the Badfinger story a happy ending after the band endured so much tragedy? A: Over the years, people have tended to dwell on that.

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Afterwards, Evans consistently pushed their demo tapes to every Beatle until he gained approval from all four to sign the group to their Apple label. Producing the track in less than one hour, McCartney made sure that they copied his own demo note-for-note. Instead, four years of hit singles and international tours precipitated the suicides of its two creative members and legal proceedings that left lawyers as the only ones enriched by the group's work. The individual group members found themselves impoverished and in debt despite their years of work, and with little prospect of seeing any of their money at any time soon. A third album, entitled Head First, on Warners , was hastily recorded by the group late in but was never released. The group's affairs, already a shambles, had turned into a nightmare. On April 23, , a year into these financial and professional crises, Ham who was critically short of money, with no prospect of seeing any that was owed to him, hanged himself in his garage. Ham was aged 27 at the time; his suicide fell just three days shy of his 28th birthday. He left behind a pregnant girlfriend, who gave birth to their daughter one month after his death.
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They are recognized for their influence on the s power pop genre. The band evolved from an earlier group called The Iveys , formed in , which became the first group signed by the Beatles ' Apple label in From to , Badfinger recorded five albums for Apple and toured extensively, before they became embroiled in the chaos of Apple Records' dissolution. After Apple Records folded in , Badfinger struggled with a host of legal, managerial and financial issues, leading to Ham taking his own life in Over the next three years, the surviving members struggled to rebuild their personal and professional lives against a backdrop of lawsuits, which tied up the songwriters' royalty payments for years. Their subsequent albums floundered, as Molland and Evans alternated between cooperation and conflict in their attempts to revive and capitalise on the Badfinger legacy.
There are few bands in the annals of rock music as star-crossed in their history as Badfinger. Pegged as one of the most promising British groups of the late '60s and the one world-class talent ever signed to the Beatles ' Apple Records label that remained with the label, Badfinger enjoyed the kind of success in England and America that most other bands could only envy. Instead, four years of hit singles and international tours precipitated the suicides of its two creative members and legal proceedings that left lawyers as the only ones enriched by the group's work. Pete Ham April 27, -- April 23, was born in one of the rougher areas of the port city of Swansea, Wales, the third of three children. A very active, adventurous, and moody youth, his biggest passion in life as a boy was music -- his father was a fan of big band music and his older brother played the trumpet.